


Foreign Bodies

by bessemerprocess



Category: Countdown RPF, Fake News RPF, Pundit & Broadcast Journalist RPF (US), Real News RPF, The Colbert Report RPF, The Daily Show RPF, The Rachel Maddow Show RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Awkward Sex, Break Up, Community: thirdmonday, Drunkenness, F/M, Grief, One of My Favorites, Podfic Available, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-14
Updated: 2009-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts, like everything between any of them, with copious amounts of alcohol.</p><p>There is happy drinking--drinking done for celebration or joy; toasting accomplishments and drinking to achievements--that sort of drinking.</p><p>This is not that. This is drinking in sorrow, in defeat, in pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foreign Bodies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deuteragonist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=deuteragonist).



> Written for deuteragonist for third_monday, prompt: Jon Stewart/Rachel Maddow, drunken h/c.  
> Thanks to everysecondtues for the last minute beta.

It starts, like everything between any of them, with copious amounts of alcohol.

There is happy drinking--drinking done for celebration or joy; toasting accomplishments and drinking to achievements--that sort of drinking.

This is not that. This is drinking in sorrow, in defeat, in pain.

Jon's not even sure what he's drinking. Something harsh, almost like gasoline on his tongue, eating away at any words he might have. He's drinking alone, because no one wants to drink with him anymore. He's too angry, too upset. He should get over it. It's time for him to move on.

"I know it hurts," Stephen had said the last time he'd picked Jon up at some bar and driven him home. Not to their place, but to the spartan desolation of Jon's apartment. "You have to deal better than this. I can't keep rescuing you."

Jon hadn't said anything, just shut the door and locked it, Stephen on the other side. Stephen isn't wrong, Jon knows he isn't, but he's not willing to admit it. He stood there, ear against his own goddamned door, hoping to hear Stephen protest, yell, but there was only silence.

This time--when the bartender starts giving him those looks that say: one more and I'm taking your keys--Jon calls Rachel. If Stephen is going to abandon him, going to be a godforsaken bastard, well, Rachel always approves of getting drunk.

Rachel shows up, still sporting traces of makeup behind her glasses.

"What he's having," she says to the bartender, sliding into the seat next to him.

"Hey," Jon says, saluting her with his empty glass. She looks tired. He's never wondered before how this was affecting her.

"Hey, yourself," Rachel replies, tossing back her first drink and then moving on to her second.

"Bad day?" Jon asks, even though he's the one having a bad day, a bad month, a bad year.

"Horrible day," Rachel says, gesturing for a refill. "Don't want to talk about it."

They sit there, quiet, as Rachel finishes off a third. She sets the glass back on the bar with a thunk and then throws down two twenties next to it. "I've got a bottle of tequila at home. Good stuff: Penca Azul."

Jon nods his assent and follows her out to catch a cab.

Rachel's apartment is the size of a postage stamp, and half her kitchen cabinets are filled with alcohol. Jon knows this because he's a unrepentant snoop, and while Rachel is pouring shots of tequila, he's poking his nose around her kitchen. "You could run a bar out of here," Jon says, fingering a bottle of gin.

"I basically do. It's not like I cook. Tequila?" she asks, a shot glass in each hand.

"Yes, please," Jon says, staring at the contents of Rachel's refrigerator: limes, lemons, club soda, tonic water, and a mostly wilted head of lettuce.

***

They've moved on to a new bottle, something that had seemed intriguing to Jon's drunken eye. Coconut rum, in a bottle big enough to have its own handle.

"He's not talking to me," he says, taking a swig straight from the bottle, sitting on the linoleum of Rachel's kitchen, and then handing the bottle over to Rachel.

"He cut the tosses," Rachel says, and Jon knows they aren't talking about the same "he"s. He doesn't wonder what Keith and Rachel are at war about this time; he just wonders how two people who aren't sleeping together can find such passion to battle each other. He thinks he would have just walked away, but these two, they circle each other like boxers, waiting for the best opportunity to strike. That is, when they aren't out on the town, the golden children of the news, out-drinking the frat boys, and out-arguing the politicians.

Rachel moves slow and deliberate as she takes her turn with the bottle. It's still almost full and very heavy.

"He did, too. Bastards, both of them." Jon makes a grabby motion for the bottle. Even his own hands betray him: the gesture is Stephen's.

Rachel hands back the bottle, and Jon swallows down another mouthful. Jon has tried being angry, tried hating Stephen, tried denying anything is wrong at all, except here on the crappy linoleum of Rachel's floor, Jon feels better than he has at any point in the last two weeks.

"Your floor sucks. They haven't changed the linoleum since the 70's." Jon gestures broadly at the floor with the same hand that's holding the bottle.

"Those of us who aren't multimillionaires have to live with mustard yellow floors." Rachel picks at the linoleum where a corner is starting to peel up.

"It's not just that it's yellow, it's the orange flowers that really make it," Jon points out.

Rachel leans in and kisses him.

"I'm gay," Jon says, except it's more of a question. Maybe that's his problem.

"So am I," Rachel says. "I'm not proposing marriage here."

"I think maybe there's been too much tequila." Jon hands her back the bottle, but Rachel isn't paying attention to it, and it ends up on the floor, a tiny crack running through the the bottle's lip. Jon's eyes fixate on that crack in the glass, and he doesn't notice the alcohol flowing out on to the floor until his socks are wet.

"It wasn't tequila, it was rum," Rachel says like the type of alcohol is the most important thing they are talking about right now. She rights the bottle, fingers lingering on the glass. It's too late now: there's more alcohol on the floor than in the bottle.

She throws him a dish towel without getting up, and he does his best to mop up the puddle he created. It's not really enough towel for the job, but his jeans are apparently more absorptive than one would think, so at least there's that.

Rachel wrinkles her nose at the sight he makes when he stands to throw the dish towel in her sink. He's still drunk enough not to have perfect balance, and his knees are old even when sober, so he makes use of the counter top to help haul him upright.

"Take your pants off," Rachel says and then joins him in standing, even though he can tell the world is spinning for her, too.

"Why? I like my pants."

"You like them coconut flavored?" Rachel asks with a grin that even Jon knows means trouble is coming.

"And battered. Coconut jeans, it's the newest thing on the gourmand circuit." Jon bends down and sniffs at his jeans. Rachel is right. The jeans aren't just wet, they smell like a tropical distillery, so he pops the top button, unzips, and manages to take them off without falling. Minor miracle right there. He throws them in the sink on top of the dish towel and Rachel just rolls her eyes.

"That'll do," she says.

"That'll do, pig," he responds, and she grins.

She skims out of her jeans and throws them after Jon's. "Shower. We smell too much like cheap sunscreen to sleep."

Jon follows her back to the bathroom. She turns on the water before shucking the rest of her clothes and helping untangle him from his. He'll never understand how she can drink so much and still undo tiny buttons. It's a skill he loses after the second beer.

***

"God fucking damn," says Jon before Rachel pushes him against the tile wall of the shower stall.

He doesn't resist. Instead, he kisses her hungrily. This is wrong in so many ways, he knows it is, but he can't stop: not crying, not kissing her. He knows he should wonder what's happened to bring to this place, but if he thinks, he'll think about Stephen, and if he thinks about Stephen he'll sink down to the floor and let the water drown him as he cries. Instead, he focuses on her hands in his hair, her tongue in his mouth, her knee between his.

He needs this now: another person's skin against his own. He's not sure how that person ended up being Rachel, but she's here and she needs this too. He'll regret it in the morning--he regrets a lot of things--but at the moment there is nothing but need.

Rachel wipes away a water droplet from under his eye with her thumb. A drop of water, just one of the many hazards of a shower; it's not a tear.

It's slow, they're slow. There is no rush, no world waiting outside, just them. Their regrets and their pain and their ghosts. Nimble fingers turn clumsy on foreign bodies. It's been years since the body beneath his hands wasn't Stephen, and Rachel, well, he's never asked her if she's even slept with a guy before.

Jon kneels down on the shower floor, replacing fingers with tongue, and lets her curl her nails into the back of his shoulders. It takes more work than he remembers: his knees are in pain; a shower is no place for the old and broken. It hurts more when she hauls him back on to his feet. She's taller than him--even barefooted--that's what he's thinking as she tries to get him off. That, and wondering what fantasy she'd conjured up when he was down there, kneeling between her feet. He comes with a sigh, trying not to think of anyone else's hands.

He feels almost sober now, that last moment before the buzz dies and the hangover hits. Rachel soaps up his back, and he wonders what kind of person it makes him that he likes this part better: the gentle care of her hand on his skin. He turns, letting the water wash the suds down the drain, and pulls her to his chest. She settles her head there on his shoulder, a ghost of someone else.

Rachel kisses his neck and murmurs, "It will get better. You'll see."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Foreign Bodies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/396156) by [sarken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken)




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